Mountain View, California — Internet search and advertising leader Google is throwing a party, but three of the four major U.S. broadcast networks — ABC, CBS and NBC — enviously guarding their control of their television broadcasting, have blocked the search engine giant from streaming full-length video content and web shows through its Google TV service, the company’s new Web-based TV streaming service, in a move that is bound to sting the search giant as it knuckles down to growing revenue streams out with search, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Google is attempting to marry Internet and television content through its Google TV platform is starting to look like a family melodrama, replete with bitter arguments over attention and money. In-to-to, that is not a good first sign for a product whose main purpose is to make internet content as easy to watch as your local station, whether you are looking at a TV screen or your computer.
Representing any new concept has been considered a boiling issue for more than a decade but Google TV is the first serious attempt to blend together the internet and broadcast television in sort of simple “one-click” way. Also it is not about web surfing or e-mailing from your couch, but rather Google TV users who happen to be sitting with a laptop can access the blocked Internet content through that computer’s browser without any problems.
However, the major broadcast networks have expressed that to prevent Google TV users from viewing the TV shows that they have posted online, in effect allowing only chosen devices and operating systems to access their Internet content.
Programs from Viacom’s MTV and News Corp.’s Fox are not currently blocked, although a Fox spokeswoman informed The Journal “that a firm decision has not yet been reached.” Besides, content from the Hulu video portal joint venture between News Corp., NBCU and Disney is also being blocked from Google TV. However, Hulu is reportedly negotiating a deal with Google to carry Hulu Plus as a paid subscription service.
To be clear, watching programs that come from your cable or satellite feed are unaffected. The block has no affect on the ability of Google TV users to view network content received through cable, satellite, or broadcast signal connections. It only affects network content on the Internet that is viewed through Google TV’s Chrome Web browser, the Wall Street Journal reported late last week.
Google is talking with representatives from the networks to remove the block, according to a source familiar with the matter.
“Google TV enables access to all the Web content you already get today on your phone and PC, but it is ultimately the content owner’s choice to restrict users from accessing their content on the platform,” a Google spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.
Getting easy access to programs off the web as easily as you would change channels. And, in Google’s flawless world you just have to pick up your remote and search for Star Trek and get it, whether it is on Netflix, your media library or your cable company’s on-demand list. Google gets into your living room with a new way to provide search, and all the ways it has to make money off that. And the reason is clearly to further postpone the time when you can cut the cord.
As Michael Learnmonth penned in AdAge, online versions of prime-time programs are part of a marketing scheme carefully conceived so as not to kill the broadcast revenue stream.
“The networks are not blocking Google TV because it is Google. They are blocking Google TV because it is putting a web TV show, with web TV show economics, on a TV, which would be incredibly disruptive to their business,” Learnmonth writes. “The reason the networks are blocking Google TV and Boxee (and Hulu is still PC-only) is about ad revenue: They do not get enough of it from the web. And letting you watch Glee on your TV, but via the web and Google TV, means substituting high broadcast revenue for lower digital revenue.”
New appliances from Sony and Logitech that support Google TV began shipping this month. With the event taking a different twist, Google reportedly asked media firms to optimize their online video offerings for the service this summer, while Time Warner’s HBO and Turner Broadcasting did, as did NBCU’s CNBC.
However, The Journal cited sources who said some at the networks wanted Google to filter out results from pirate sites when users searched for their content, as the service empowers users to search both Web video and TV shows and other programming available online from a single interface.